The more Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries (QDPI&F) chickpea breeder Merrill Ryan learned about the name 'Kyabra', the more pleased she was that she had chosen it for her new chickpea variety.

Naming new varieties has been a traditional privilege for plant breeders and the tradition has allowed them to inject a little bit of personality into serious science.

Australian wheats have been named after explorers and birds and barleys after noted cricketers, while New South Wales DPI chickpea breeder Ted Knights also shows a weakness for the pitch and wickets game by using cricket terminology - like Yorker and Flipper - for new varieties from his program.

After deciding to base the names of her new chickpea varieties on major Queensland river systems, Dr Ryan consulted her atlas and - because of its suitability to western Queensland production areas - chose Kyabra, after a major tributary of Cooper Creek, in Queensland's Channel Country, for her first release.

Later she learned of Kyabra Creek's significance to the original aboriginal inhabitants of Queensland's far south-west, because of its many reliable waterholes, from which the name derives.

Then she learned of Kyabra Creek's links to the pioneering Durack family, as it formed one boundary of their extensive pastoral runs in the Channel Country before they made their epic move across northern Australia to settle in The Kimberley.

QDPI&F acting assistant Director General Dr Greg Robbins officially launched Kyabra at a field day during the Chickpea Focus 2005 conference in Goondiwindi.

Dr Robbins said Kyabra would set a new benchmark for desi chickpeas, with a four per cent higher yield than the most commonly planted current variety Jimbour, better seed size and quality, excellent early vigour ideal for deep sowing, better plant height and harvestability and good lodging resistance.

Kyabra had the same levels of ascochyta susceptibility and phytophthora resistance as Jimbour but appeared to be less affected than Jimbour, Howzat and Amethyst by the widely used, post-plant pre-emergent broadleaf herbicide Balance®.

With similar maturity and disease reactions to Jimbour, Kyabra was broadly adapted to the same production areas - southern Queensland and, potentially, Central Queensland.